What codec do you use for lossless video in particular for MAC OS X ?

[Todd Kopriva]

Animation and PNG are both excellent choices. Animation does better for things with large expanses of the same color, like cartoons (hence its name), and PNG does better with more photorealistic gradients. For most of what people do with After Effects, I think that PNG in a QuickTime container works well as a nearly universal lossless compression format in a nearly universal container… but Animation might do better in some cases.

BTW, I recognize that this is a VERY (overly) simple answer to a very complex question. E.g., if you are using a codec as an interchange format within your own workflow, then universality doesn’t matter so much, and you can use whatever esoteric codec that you want. Also, there’s the issue of 8-bpc versus 10-bpc versus 16-bpc versus 32-bpc formats. Animation is 8-bpc. If you’re handing off something as an intermediate file, and you’d rather not lose the data that gets quantized out with an 8-bpc codec, then the conversation gets more interesting.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Dave:
Todd didn’t mean a sequence of PNG stills, but rather using PNG encoding in a Quicktime file. It’s mathemtically lossless. It supports alpha channels. It’s cross-platform. The two drawbacks are: No higher bit depths (16/32 bpc), and zero performance optimizations (just like Animation, but even worse). It’s more an exchange or “digital freezer” flavor, because real time playback can be challenging. It’s great when going from one app to another, for example.
Animation produces smaller sizes in content which has large areas of plain color (a lower third can be as low as 1 MB/s and it’s still lossless). PNG produces smaller file sizes for most “video” content.

ProRes is “visually lossless”, not mathemtically lossless. A loose term which means that on simple inspection it looks identical to the original. But it’s not really identical to the original 🙂

Apple offers free ProRes decoders for Macs without FCS, and also for Windows. You can read QT ProRes files that way, but not generate them. I don’t think these free decoders have been updated for the new ProRes flavors yet.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

It used to be true that ProRes files could only be opened if you had FCS, Dave. It’s not a mistake what you said. The free ProRes decoders for Mac and Win were introduced recently.

Adolfo Rozenfeld · Adobe

[Chris Forrester]

Thanks for the input given 🙂

I think for the moment I will stick with aimation codec least I can get 25fps playback of my drives when using my laptop. I did recently create a QT in png format and was only able to get 15fps playback on my system (playing from QT Player). I am guessing the compression is slowing things down. I shall probably use that for long term archiving in the the future.

Pity no one has seen those other codecs on the Mac yet, they do interest me so I may just have to do some more investigation but with my PC (that poor thing is gathering some dust nowdays 😛 )

Regards
Chris Forrester
demoreel http://www.chrisforrester.tv

[Victor Burgin]

<< I will stick with aimation codec least I can get 25fps playback of my drives when using my laptop >>

At what frame size? I have a 24 fps 1400 x 1050 (SXGA+) Animation that plays back fine from my Mac Pro, but staggers on my 2.4 GHz 7200 rpm MacBook Pro. Conversion to H.264 gives smooth motion but produces unacceptable artefacts (e.g., posterizing on even surfaces). I have to hand the movie over soon for playback from a recent model iMac – so I need help!

Any further insights anyone can offer greatly appreciated.

Thanks !

[Marcello Mazzilli]

Somebody found out some good solution? Pro-Res is realtime in Final Cut but not on Adobe Premiere… Is there something for Mac like Cineform Prospect HD (great realtime playback on PC/ Adobe Premiere) for Mac? I can play realtime XDCAM ( MP4 wrapped )and P2 but these are shooting formats and not really good formats to use as intermediates when working with HDV for example.
Also.. why the hell Premiere works realtime with XDCAM MP4 wrapper and not MOV wrapper.. BUT EXPORTS MOV WRAPPER AND NOT MP4 WRAPPER ?!?!

siRoma di Marcello Mazzilli
Corporate video productions in Italy
http://www.siroma.com

[Marcello Mazzilli]

I have picked a platform.. That’s MAC.. but Premiere (on Mac) doesn’t use Prto-Res in realtime like Final Cut does

siRoma di Marcello Mazzilli
Corporate video productions in Italy
http://www.siroma.com

[Adriano Castaldini]

A doubt.
I try to convert a little segment of a DVD-mpeg2 into PNG-quicktime to obtain a lossless footage to use in AfterEffects.
My questions are:
1) is it good to deinterlace the original mpeg2 when I convert into PNG?
2) mpeg2-dvd is 720*576 with non-square pixels, so, when I convert into PNG, do I have to change the size into 768*576?
3) in AfterEffects I’ll use alpha channel and finally i’ll export into H264, so, when I convert mpeg2 into PNG, should I use millions-color+ or not?
4) to convert the mpeg2, do I have to use QuickTime or I can choose another software live MPEG2-Streamclip?
Thanks

[Adriano Castaldini]

Ok, I don’t deinterlace, but exporting into PNG, the setting window in quicktime asks me if I want to activate the interlace filter (with many options: upper field, bottom field, etc.)
So, is it better to leave unchecked that filter? Or is it better to activate it in order to obtain an interlaced PNG movie?
Thanks a lot.

[Adriano Castaldini]

Thanks Dave, so you confirm that I HAVE TO check the interlace filter in QT setting (by default it’s unchecked).